This all sounds very complicated, both in terms of concept and execution. This is the first in a series of releases which contain remixes of tracks from the album Madame E, by Mirco Magnani and Ernesto Tomasini. So far, so straightforward. Madame E is ‘a free reinterpretation of Georges Bataille’s short novel Madame Edwarda (publ. in France 1941), in which Eroticism, Religion and Death are interlaced.’ Bataille is by no means an easy read. And while I’m yet to hear Madame E, ‘Plaisir’, at least in its remixed form, is by no means an easy listen.

Pink and white noise and strains of feedback which register in the range of bat-hearing jostle against jolting ruptures of panoramic bass frequencies and irregular, thumping, electronic beats. It pulsates and throbs and bristles and jars. With soaring, semi-operatic falsetto vocals drifting over the ever-swelling electro-industrial grind, it comes on like a deranged and super-intense hybrid of Scott Walker and Whitehouse. Maybe that could be a future project, by way of a counterpart to Walker’s collaboration with Sunn O))). Or maybe tis already fulfils that ultra-niche gap in the market.

So where’s the complication? Well, this release is credited to Ken Karter, the remixer, for a start, despite it containing music originally composed by Mirco Magnani and Ernesto Tomasini. So, this release is the first in a series which sits under the banner of MADAME E. Rèintérprétations et Remixes, which will be released periodically as one-sided 12” singles in limited editions of 10 – which is barely a test pressing – and digitally. These are designed to ‘include different points of view from artists somehow close to the album’s topics and atmospheres’. And after the last remix taken from the album, the whole remix series will be published as an album titled MADAME E. Rèintérprétations et Remixes.

I’m not entirely sure of the purpose of the individual digital releases, but that’s a question of economics and practicality. This is clearly less about practicality and convention than it’s about art.

It’s a release which invites meandering dissections and deep, analytical appraisal. It’s a release which likely deserves it, too. But there’s a time and a place, and a work so deeply invested in intertext and context. We’re in the realms of critical theory and reader reception, with a work which purposefully challenges its own place and function. But when high art meets populist electro tropes, anything goes. And with this, anything goes.